How to fully remove all packages installed by 'gnome-session-fallback'?

Question

I mainly use Unity, but I installed gnome with:

sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback

To test how it was, but then I managed to delete all of my settings for my startup applications, so basically Gnome does not load properly now. And what I really need to do is to reinstall Gnome, but when I try just first of all uninstalling it with:

sudo apt-get purge gnome-session-fallback

This does not remove all of those 50-100 extra Gnome packages which it installed when I first installed it. So that is really my question, how do I fully remove Gnome and all of the extra packages installed by gnome-session-fallback, so that I can reinstall?

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OS Information:

Description:    Ubuntu 14.10
Release:    14.10

Package Information:

gnome-session-fallback:
  Installed: 1:3.8.1-2ubuntu4
  Candidate: 1:3.8.1-2ubuntu4
  Version table:
 *** 1:3.8.1-2ubuntu4 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ utopic/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Solution

To remove gnome-session-flashback or gnome-session-fallback:

1. sudo apt-get purge gnome-session-fallback
2. sudo apt-get autoremove # Uninstall unneeded Packages
3. sudo apt-get autoclean # Delete packages no longer installed

You could just ask apt to re-install it for you however:

1. sudo apt-get install --reinstall gnome-session-fallback

If you're still having trouble (and aren't in any rush):

1. sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop

Comments

[Admin]

I tried that, but it did not uninstall any other packages other than gnome-session-fallback. And I remember an awful lot of other packages being installed as well when I installed that.

[Admin]

What does ubuntu-desktop reinstall? Is that everything? And would there be any danger in doing that?

[earthmeLon]

There is always 'danger' when installing/removing/re-installing packages. ubuntu-desktop is a group of packages that is very core to Ubuntu, but in this case, it would help re-install your gnome packages.